The Sunday matinee showdown of the Warriors and Raptors felt like two cars swerving off the road into each others’ paths. Toronto was reeling, on a four-game skid and 2-6 overall in December, playing without their DPOY-caliber forward OG Anunoby. The Warriors were losers of three straight, struggling amidst the loss of MVP point guard Steph Curry and All-Star candidate Andrew Wiggins. Neither team felt good going into this one.
Golden State needed something special from Jordan Poole to rise above the tide offensively, but Steve Kerr played a major role with his playcalling. The Warriors ran 13 zone possessions, a very high mark considering their usual defensive scheme, throwing Toronto’s offense out of rhythm at important times.
A Seldom-Used Tactic
For background, it’s important to understand how little Golden State relies on the zone. At only 5.6% of their possessions, it doesn’t form a crux of their overall defense (per Synergy). The league-leading Miami Heat run zone 19.8% of the time, for comparison. Golden State uses the zone sparingly, rarely employing it for large chunks of a game. Sunday marked the sixth time in 31 games that they have reached double-digit zone possessions.
Traditionally, Golden State avoids the zone to keep their switching in play. Units based around Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala rarely felt the call for zone. With Klay playing a diminished defensive role, and recent absences from their best perimeter defender in Andrew Wiggins, it makes sense why Kerr has leaned on the zone a bit in recent games.
They’ve seen a slight uptick in the past three games (8.67 zone poss. per game compared to 6.29 in previous 28), but there are some clear season-long trends to the usage beyond injury concerns. Their five highest zone games have come against the Pistons, the Pelicans twice, the Clippers, and the Raptors. And these teams have a lot in common offensively.
First and foremost, the presence of an elite (or a very few good) drive threats. Detroit had Cade Cunningham (16.6 drives, 7th in the league) and Jaden Ivey (11.5) to contain. Zion’s 15 drives per game (13th in the league) had to be counteracted. The Clippers were limited by injury in that matchup but had John Wall, Reggie Jackson, and Norman Powell (9.4, 8.1, 8.0 drives respectively) as the primary scoring threats. Toronto had both Pascal Siakam (16.3 drives, 9th in the league) and Fred VanVleet (12.9, 26th) pressuring a defense without its best wing defender. Playing in a variety of zones can take away driving gaps, throwing offenses reliant on penetration into disarray.
These teams are also not upper-echelon distance shooting teams, a good way to break zones. Zone-defending teams often have to concede either above-the-break or corner threes trying to prevent drives. None of these four teams rank in the top 14 in 3-point attempts per game, and only New Orleans cracks the top 10 in shooting percentage from deep (coupled with a fourth-to-last three-point rate). They also have weaknesses that can be exploited by the zone. New Orleans and Toronto are both bottom-7 in above-the-break 3 frequency, with Detroit at 19th (per Cleaning the Glass).
A low 3-man back line in a zone can deter drives and give up above-the-break threes, while a higher line can be used on a team like Los Angeles with an unusually low corner three reliance and accuracy (19th in attempts, 20th in accuracy). These figures offer some explanation as to why the individual matchups and team weaknesses can lead to 5 games comprising 49% of Golden State’s total zone possessions after 31 matchups.
That background helps us understand why the Warriors ran the fifth-most zone of the season on Sunday night, and why it helped keep Toronto’s offense at bay.
Discouraging Drives, Closing Down Threes
The use of the 1-2-2 doubles up on “nail” help, where one player would normally wait near the free throw line to help early on drivers. With one or two helpers coming, few can break that help without kicking out. If properly executed, the defense can use it to stop a quality driver and force a perimeter shot with a good closeout.
The help from Moody and Jerome walls off the drive and leaves Moody with the ability to rotate right out to Siakam and close down another potential drive. Siakam is a solid ATB 3 shooter (35%) but not nearly as dangerous as when he goes downhill.
You can see the hesitancy to drive in effect here:
Multiple swings back and forth, both Scottie Barnes and Malachi Flynn hesitating on their respective drives, and a late shot-clock heave. Exactly what zone is designed for. You can also see Siakam trying to flash middle multiple times, an effective zone-breaking technique, but nobody can find the pass.
When rotating effectively, a great zone can be hard to break. It denies cuts, threes, and forces difficult drives that result in kickout after kickout.
But Toronto wasn’t helpless, and as a skilled offensive team they put up a fight against a disorienting scheme.
Raptors Claw Back
That middle flash was one of the ways Toronto found gaps in the zone, as talented players tend to do. Siakam puts it to excellent use here against both the 1-2-2 and the 2-3 zone alignments:
Dalano Banton is a talented player in his own right and has the catch radius to be an effective middle flasher and cutter in tough zone gaps:
Another zone-breaking technique, other than middle flashes and above-the-break threes (which Toronto highly struggles with), is a good old-fashioned baseline cut between dunker spots. Effectively reading the defense’s reaction to a drive can lead to some opportunities behind the back line of a 2-3 zone, as Thaddeus Young shows here:
Of course, there’s no real match for a tough bucket, which can be found depending on the level of the top two zone defenders:
Toronto did manage to win some battles, and it’s fun to see teams get creative to get back on the horse after being thrown off their game. But ultimately…
Zone Helps Deliver Victory
Toronto only managed to score 0.69 points per zone possession, compared to a neat 1.0 PPP in man. With Golden State’s switching limited sans Wiggins, they needed to go deep in the bag of tricks and pulled off enough defense for a win. They even struggled against the zone in their own right (0.64 PPP). But some key stops in zone during the third quarter helped reextend the lead going into the fourth, stretching the lead to 22 and putting Toronto out of striking distance.
This success gave Golden State an extra element they needed with so many factors working against their defense and could be an asset in the coming games if Andrew Wiggins and Steph Curry continue to miss time. Their next three matchups come against the Knicks and Nets to close the road trip with a New York back-to-back, then three days off before a Christmas showdown with the top-seeded Memphis Grizzlies.
Jalen Brunson ranks fifth in drives and points resulting from drives per game, Kevin Durant holds a near 1 PPP mark on drives, and Ja Morant‘s driving excellence needs no introduction, ranking second in drives and third in drive points. Golden State will be eager to deny those three stars from getting the switches and help scenarios they want, and could certainly throw some zone their way.
New York (23rd ATB 3 frequency, 27th accuracy) is a brutal shooting team above the break, and neither Memphis (20th freq, 15th acc) nor Brooklyn (13th freq, 11th acc) has lit it up on those threes this year. Perhaps the zone will be something of use for the Warriors before the end of Steph Curry’s and Andrew Wiggins’ absences are up, as the team searches for a lifeline in crucial game after game that will decide the direction of their season.
Keep an eye out for a potential uptick in zone in the short term, starting with tonight’s game in Madison Square Garden.
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